Thursday, November 09, 2006

Working Alone

It's 4:30 pm here in this building. I'm the only one left and I still have several hours to go with my experimental work.

One of the things one has to learn when working at a US National Lab is the plethora of safety issues. We get trained for many different safety issues based on the job hazzards that we are expected to face. One of the things we are instructed is the Working Alone policy.

When one has to do experimental, one inevitably could be dealing with hazzard such as radiation, high-powered lasers, electrical equipment, etc.. While in many instance, one isn't the only person in the building, there are some cases (such as me where most of the regular occupant of the building leaves by 3:30 pm) where one is the only person alone in the building. When that occurs, the Work Alone policy kicks in automatically.

This policy instructs the person who is alone to call a specified phone number. Then he/she talks to a security personnel and gives his/her name, location, phone number, etc. Then an arrangement is made whereby a phone call will be made every designated interval. If the person doesn't answer that phone call, a security personnel will be sent to check up on that person.

The person also has to call back before leaving work to cancel this, of course, or else they'll continue to look for you and it'll be a mess the next day.

So guess who's going to be calling for this in a few mins? I think I'll have them call me every hour.

Zz.

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